Skip to main content

Way Too Much Stress on a common word

"Morph"? Really?



Back in 2005 I wrote a review of a then three-volume set of books on "Speculative Capital" by one Nasser Saber. Read more about that here, if you like.

A very short account is that the review was not a favorable one, but did have as a consequence a memorable exchange in which Saber indicated he would provide a full demolition of my inanity in his fourth volume.

Thus far there has been no fourth volume. I'm a patient guy. In the meantime, I see that Nasser is no longer actively maintaining his blog, apparently because he is engaged in the final stretch of writing for this fourth volume. So perhaps 2012 will be the year it finally appears.

His wife, Sarina Saber, has told his fans on the blog "Dialectics of Finance" that she will keep the flames burning on her own companion blog, "Dialectics of Social Change."

On that companion blog, she has recently posted a bit of dialog that appears to represent a conversation between Nasser and herself.  She considers this dialog evidence that Nasser is "the only man in the world who knows whan really went wrong at JPMorgan Chase."

So ... what went wrong at JPMorgan Chase? Hedging "morphed" into speculation. As it must do because, after all, the world is dialectical.

Thus we are treated to a lot about the word "morph" and how bankers don't usually use the word, and how JPM's CEO, Jamie Dimon, did use the word. Which proves ... something.

Waaaay too much emphasis there on what is actually a quite common word.

I expect to have a brief thought about what really happened on Sunday. In the meantime, here is a much more fruitful line of thought than anything we get from the Saber's: the only mistake the whale made may have been in timing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak